


it must get lonely there sometimes

by roselatte



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 16:01:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15975680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roselatte/pseuds/roselatte
Summary: If the memories in Adam’s apartment hang like photos, the ones at the Barns haunt like ghosts.





	it must get lonely there sometimes

**Author's Note:**

> there is a Very vague reference to past assault near the end of this. let me know if it's something i should tag??

Ronan sits in his car, the music low. The shadows of the church walls stretch long and dark on the concrete as the sun sinks. He considers just driving away; it was an impulsive decision to come here when they hadn’t made any plans. But he’s been here long enough now that leaving would mean admitting defeat, to  _what_ Ronan does not know. Possibly to Adam, who probably already knows he’s here.  

Ronan waits for the song to finish, then gets out of his car. He tracks his hand along the side of the shitbox as he passes it. The metal is cold and dewy from the fog.

Adam opens the door before Ronan can knock. “I was starting to think you wouldn’t come up.”

“If you knew I was here why didn’t you yell or something?”

Adam shrugs and moves to the side. “I didn’t want to assume. Maybe you had a visit with God.”

“Well, shit, Parrish,” Ronan says as he steps inside, “you get accepted into one ivy and start thinking you’re God.”

Adam laughs. “Stop that.”

Ronan brings up the early acceptance a few times a week; there’s a muted, joyful magic in Adam’s face whenever it’s mentioned, like he can’t quite believe it happened to him. Ronan falls into it each time.

He brushes against Adam as he walks past him, moving slowly to make the contact last. If Adam notices, he doesn’t say anything. Just like Ronan doesn’t say anything when Adam leans into his passing warmth.

It’s awkward, the first few minutes whenever they’re alone together now. Ronan has to remind himself he can do the things he wants to do to Adam, and that’s okay. He has to remind himself Adam can do the things he wants to do to Ronan, and that’s okay too.

Adam’s apartment is full of memories; they adorn the walls like proud photographs. They are marks of progress, of a past and a present, and the promise of a future. There’s one hanging right by the door—of shy kisses goodnight when Ronan leaves. There are a couple over Adam’s bed, of starving kisses when they're too tired to pretend they can be apart. Several more are scattered on the floor next to his bed, because Ronan no longer sleeps there; those are all turned down lips and secret, wistful gazes.

He turns back to Adam, who’s watching him without shame. Ronan is all too aware of the purplish circles under his eyes.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey, Lynch.”

“Hey.” Ronan swings his arm out and hugs Adam’s finger with one of his, tugging him into the dingy light of the desk lamp.

Adam follows easily, his smile amused.

Ronan doesn’t need to make excuses to see Adam anymore, but he makes one anyway. “Wanna smash carts at Food Lion?”

Adam shrugs. “I guess. I’ve been meaning to go anyway.” Ronan opens his mouth, but Adam is faster— “and that’s not a date. Food Lion isn’t going to be our first date.”

“Whatever, dude. Sorry you don’t know romance.”

Adam rolls his eyes and pulls his hand away, only to press both of them on Ronan’s shoulders and urge him toward his bed. “I’m gonna study for a few more hours, so keep yourself busy if you’re gonna hang around.”

Ronan ends up falling asleep—which was probably Adam’s intention—and is woken up in what feels like minutes by something cold against his forehead.

“Jesus shit.” He lurches away. “ _What_ Parrish.”

Adam hands him the cold object—a pudding cup. “You’re so dramatic. It’s not even that cold.”

Ronan rubs his eyes. “I thought I brought something back.”

“Oh.” Adam grimaces. “Would that be bad?”

“Maybe,” Ronan says because he doesn’t know. He only knows it’s not always safe, that he can’t stop things even when he wants to, and he prefers his unsafe things to not be around Adam. Before Adam can press further, he holds up the pudding cup and asks, ”the fuck do I do with this?”

Adam, thankfully, lets it go.

“Eat it,” he explains, “I know it’s not served on a silver platter so you probably can’t—”

“Shut up,” Ronan says.

“They’re expiring tomorrow so help me finish them.” Adam tears the plastic lid off his chocolate pudding. “We can split the strawberry and go to Food Lion after.”

“Huh.” Ronan’s head lolls to the side and a thrill rushes through him when Adam’s eyes trail up the line of his neck. He waves his pudding cup between them. “So is this the date then?”

Adam groans and sticks a spoon in Ronan’s mouth as retaliation. He sits down on the edge of his bed and Ronan drapes one leg over his lap. Adam makes fast work of his pudding, Ronan slower because he admires the way Adam sucks on his spoon for an extra second. Their spoons fight over the strawberry pudding even though Ronan doesn’t care for the taste and hates the filmy way it coats his mouth.

He ends up with the last spoonful of pudding and considers offering it to Adam. That would be cute. Feeding each other was a cute couple thing to do. Ronan imagines holding the spoon to Adam’s mouth and the way his tongue would dart out over his upper lip and leave it looking wet.

His thoughts cut off when Adam’s lips close around the spoon for a moment before he pulls back, swallowing the pudding.

“That was fucked up,” Ronan remarks, glancing from his now empty spoon to Adam.

Adam smiles. “Why were you staring at it like that? I got jealous.”

His tongue licks off a spot of pudding at the corner of his mouth. His lips glisten.

Ronan carelessly sets the pudding cup on Adam’s desk and kisses him. _Finally_.

It’s slow and heated, Ronan pulling back for only a second before Adam’s mouth is back on his, chasing and searching. The pudding tastes much better from Adam’s tongue. His arms skim down to Ronan's lower back and his fingertips slide into his back pockets.

Ronan grips at Adam’s hair and he makes a pleased sound.

His phone vibrates.

“Ignore it,” Ronan whispers against Adam’s neck.

Adam does not ignore it. He’s trying to get Ronan to use his phone more in preparation for when he gets his own phone and the strategy includes leaving no text unignored. He pulls back with Ronan’s phone in one hand, the other on his hip. Miffed at this unsurprising betrayal, Ronan flops back onto the bed.

Adam squeezes his hip, smiling faintly. “They’re all from Declan. Should I read them to you?”

Ronan’s mood sours. Only a little; Adam still has a hand on him.

“God, no.” Ronan pulls the pillow over his face. “Smother me instead.”

There’s a drop of weight on his torso as Adam moves and then the pillow is gone and he’s smothering Ronan’s face with kisses. It’s unbearably sweet.

Ronan’s lungs overlap and switch places.

Adam pulls back at the lack of response, his eyes dark and nervous. “Too much?”

Ronan can’t talk yet so he shakes his head and pushes gently on the side of Adam’s face until he lays down next to him. Ronan turns on his side and their knees knock together. He slots one of his legs in between Adam’s.

“I really don’t know romance,” Adam confesses, smiling wryly. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

It’s the darkness, and the closeness, that makes it easy for them to confess things like this. The weak sun rays falling on them through crooked shutters are all that define Adam’s silhouette. Ronan could confess everything here.

“You don’t suck at it.” And then, “I don’t care about going to Food Lion.”

“Oh _no_ ,” Adam drags out the no. “I wanted us to get matching broken noses.”

“Asshole,” Ronan says fondly.

 

* * *

 

It’s a process, getting used to living in the Barns again. If the memories in Adam’s apartment hang like photos, the ones here haunt like ghosts. And the ghosts are everywhere. Not all of them are friendly.

The worst part of the day is the dreaming, and that’s rarely successful, so it’s not even a big part of the day.

Worked around that are fixing fences, researching magic, and finding new paint colors for the buildings. Opal helps him with the last one. Ronan prints out color palettes and whichever ones Opal considers delicious are possible contenders.

Overall, except for the worst part, it’s a good break from everything. He wants it to last. He wants to get used to it.

“Is Adam coming over today?” Opal asks between a mouthful of painfully cheerful orange tones. A poor choice, but he’ll make it work.

“Don’t chew with your mouth open,” Ronan scolds.

Opal smacks her lips loudly in response.

Ronan rolls his eyes. “He’s never coming over if you’re gonna be like that.”

She makes an awful, keening whine and latches onto Ronan’s leg when he gets up, so Ronan has to drag her along the floor as he limps. He makes it halfway to the kitchen before looking at her over his shoulder. She looks up belligerently.

“I don’t know if he’s coming over Opal, it’s a weekday. He has school. And work.”

“So then you’ll go over, won’t you? Why can’t I go over too?”

“Because you don’t have feet.”

Opal knocks her head against the back of Ronan’s knee. “I do have feet!”

“You have hooves,” Ronan corrects.

Opal makes the keening sound again. Some choice words run through Ronan’s head.

“Look, you wanna help me make dinner? Maybe Parrish will come over if he smells it.”

It’s only early afternoon, but Opal mulls it over like it’s logical. “I want the peels.” She scurries around him to the kitchen without waiting for an answer.

Opal helping with dinner is mostly Ronan cooking while trying to stop Opal from putting whatever she thinks looks cool into the food. It not just that she wants to see Adam, Ronan thinks, it’s that sometimes she wants to do intrinsically human things and doesn’t know how.

He ends up with a very simple vegetable and spaghetti mix. Ronan pours in some white wine Declan left behind because he saw people on Food Network do it once.

It smells good; Adam would like it. He doesn’t hide how much he enjoys everything Ronan makes, but Ronan also caught him putting two slices of bread with cheese in between in the microwave and calling it grilled cheese so Ronan doesn’t let it get to his head.

It tastes good too. There’s his mother, faded and washed out, offering him a sneaky first bite. Ronan sucks in a breath, and she’s gone with the exhale.

Opal sucks on a cucumber peel next to him.

He focuses on the grounding, eerie hugeness of her eyes. “Do you want some pasta? Some damn carbs for once?”

She shakes her head, then holds out the cucumber peel to him.

“No thanks.”

She squints at him. “Will you try dreaming now?”

Ronan shrugs. He doesn’t like how she knows. “Maybe.”

She slurps the cucumber peel up and squeezes his hand. Her fingers are slimy. “Bugs to catch.”

“You can say you’re gonna eat them,” Ronan calls after her, “I don’t care!”

Ronan pokes the spaghetti with a fork. Texting Adam is an option, but the thought of typing out something that's casual but not too casual and romantic but not too romantic is revolting.

Making dinner comes off a lot stronger than sharing pudding cups on a rickety bed.

If Adam comes over, he’ll know to eat it, if he doesn’t—Chainsaw would like it too.

Ronan walks through the living room, right by the phantom laughter of his parents on the couch, and up to his room. He would get used to it. He would make it okay.

Ronan shifts from sleep to half-asleep when he registers the hand on his back. It traces the lines of his tattoo in a scattered way, like the uneven way leaves or petals might fall on his back.

It’s completely safe. He feels completely safe. He wonders what would happen if he says  _stop._

It’s Adam’s hand. Ronan knows from the way his index finger crooks a bit to the side from some old blister. He knows because the joint of his thumb is rough and thick. He knows because when Adam presses his hand flat on his lower back, the second digit of his pinkie digs in a little more.

It’s Adam’s hand, so Ronan’s completely safe. Adam’s fingers drag up the dip of his spine and it’s heavenly. His fingers drift over the dip and zig zag and loop over his back in some absent pattern. They climb up to the back of his neck and flutter there, indecisive or scared or both, before massaging in between the bony knobs.

There’s nothing sharp about any of it.

His hand goes down again, slow and feather-light, back over his tattoo.

What will happen if he says it? Adam will, without a doubt, stop, and Ronan doesn’t want that; there’s no reason to say it.

He says it because he can. He mouths it really, and hopes Adam doesn’t hear. 

The absence of Adam’s touch forces Ronan’s eyes open. He’s kneeling on the ground, one arm folded loosely on the edge of Ronan’s bed, the other tense near his back.

“Hey,” Ronan mumbles.

Adam’s mouth curves up uncertainly. “Hey, dreamer.”

Ronan’s heart fills. “Hey,” he says again.

Adam’s hand reaches for Ronan’s face and hovers over his forehead before his fingers curl into his palm and he drops it near Ronan’s shoulder. Sleep still sits on Ronan’s eyelids so he can’t make anything of this dance. He can’t make much of anything of his thoughts.

“You okay?” Adam asks. “No nightmares, right?”

“Mm.”

His brows tip down in a slight angle.“Did I do something wrong?”

“Hm?”

Adam’s smile softens. “Nevermind.” He raises his hand up to Ronan’s face and when it hesitates again, Ronan tilts his head so his forehead can brush up against Adam’s fingertips. His hand curves over his forehead and starts sliding through his hair in soothing motions. Ronan shifts his head to give Adam better access.

There’s a quiet magic in Adam’s face.

“Did you eat.” It’s less of a question and more of a mush of syllables Ronan muffles into the pillow.

“Yeah. Uh—I was gonna ask you first but I didn’t want to wake you up.”

“S’cool.” Adam doesn’t need to know Ronan made it in the first place in case he visited.

“I didn’t text either, before driving up. I don’t know if you have stuff to do later or if you didn’t want me to come over.”

He’s rambling, but his voice is a low murmur and Ronan could just drift off to it. Instead, he turns his head some more and smiles lazily. “I want you to come.”

Adam’s shoulders relax and he smirks. “That doesn’t work when you’re sleepy.”

Ronan clumsily grabs at Adam’s arm. “Just get the fuck in here, Parrish.”

Adam allows himself to be dragged into the bed and lifts Ronan’s elbow to tuck himself under it. “Are you gonna fall back asleep?”

“Yes.”

“When you wake up you’re usually—” Adam snaps his fingers without making the sound. “You know, just up.”

Ronan peers at him blearily. “No reason to. Didn’t bring shit back.”

Adam gently cups his hand over Ronan’s head and rolls the ball of his thumb in circles right above his ear. He shifts and his other hand squeezes in between Ronan’s cheek and the pillow it’s resting on. Adam kisses him, soft, the curve of his lower lip fitting into Ronan’s mouth. Ronan’s only just there for it but he notes that he added too much white wine.

His hand scratches over Ronan’s scalp and that bit of clarity vanishes.

“I’ve never seen you like this.” Adam’s finger hops dots up and down the slope of his nose. “It’s nice.”

It’s because he’s so pleasantly drowsy. It’s because he didn’t bring anything back. It’s because his face is between Adam’s hands. “It’s because of you.”

Adam’s finger stills on its track. Ronan wants to open his eyes but he’s at a place where if he does Adam would look like a dream.

He pulls Adam closer. “Just say I’m sweet and shut up.”

Adam puts his chin over Ronan’s head. “You’re sweet. And shut up.”

This was going to be embarrassing tomorrow, but for right now, it’s okay.

 


End file.
